One of the biggest problems with the current digital deluge is the tendency to no longer see what’s directly in front of us. The sheer amount of information now being passed around means that we’re becoming less able to filter what’s really important from what’s really not. Information is no longer power. Our deep and undivided attention is.

Constant digital distraction (which results in constant partial attention) also means that our concentration spans are shortening (or so they say) and our peripheral vision is narrowing. Throw in some headphones and things aren’t looking good, especially if you are seeking new opportunities or risks. This is because the early harbingers of forthcoming upheaval and disruption are often hidden in tiny snippets of seemingly trivial information or obscured in plain sight in the shadows and auditory obfuscations of our everyday existence.

So how can you spot these ‘weak signals’ or other forerunners of change? How can you spot things that don’t tend to announce themselves in huge data sets? How can you mine for insights in research groups when you don’t know exactly what you are looking for?

The answer is to develop a mind-set that’s always looking for these things. You need to become more attuned to instinct and gut feelings.

After the 2017 STEAM Symposium in San Francisco there were many great ideas floating around the brain. It was next to impossible to capture them all. When getting to the meat of what was most useful to share with the Maker community what really stood out was exploring the best ways to create budget-friendly makerspaces. This is constantly discussed in education circles as makerspaces are not only a hot trend, but visibly impact the student learning experience. My personal highlight was meeting and chatting with MAKE’s very own Dale Dougherty who was passionate about the concept of Makerspace design by and for the user or what is commonly known as user-center design.

When designing a space, a couple things are clear, while you don’t need a lot of money to start you need a minimum of a clearly defined vision, mission and purpose. Whether you plan to ring in the New Year in a brand new makerspace or undergo a makerspace reboot, here are some tips collected from the STEAM Symposium experts and from the San Diego Maker community to get you going.

Define your short and long term projected budget

When money is tight, first put pencil to paper in figuring out this magic number. It will largely determine your strategy. Educators who are especially strapped might be used to seizing the opportunity to think of creative and inventive ways to DIY or seek out space and materials. As a note, both short-term and long-term visions for the program might have differing budgetary constraints.

How will big data Play a role in Google’s future SERP algorithms? Over half a decade ago, Search Engine Watch posted an article on the impact big data has on search engine optimization. They provided a quote from Sergey Brin stating that Google is changing its focus towards semantic content.

Creative thought has a pattern of its own, brain activity scans revealPeople who are flexible, original thinkers show signature forms of connectivity in their brains, study shows

Donatella Versace finds it in the conflict of ideas, Jack White under pressure of deadlines. For William S Burroughs, an old Dadaist trick helped: cutting pages into pieces and rearranging the words.

Every artist has their own way of generating original ideas, but what is happening inside the brain might not be so individual. In new research, scientists report signature patterns of neural activity that mark out those who are most creative.

“We have identified a pattern of brain connectivity that varies across people, but is associated with the ability to come up with creative ideas,” said Roger Beaty, a psychologist at Harvard University. “It’s not like we can predict with perfect accuracy who’s going to be the next Einstein, but we can get a pretty good sense of how flexible a given person’s thinking is.”

Well, if you are even remotely related to the technological field, chances are you may be aware of the world going gaga over these buzzwords. Though these different buzzwords are being used in a multitude of diverse application areas, at the core, they all mean the same thing — making sense of vast amounts of data in a way that would give out some intelligence to act upon.

Although Machine Learning has now gained prominence owing to the exponential rate of data generation and technological advancements to support it, its roots lie way back in 17th century. People have been attempting to make sense of data and processing it to gain quick insights since ages.

Let me take you through an interesting journey down the history of Machine Learning — how it all began and how did it come to what it is today.

I’ve got this ominous feeling that 2018 could be the year that everything changes dramatically. The incredible breakthroughs we saw in 2017 for deep learning will carry over in a very powerful way in 2018. A lot of work coming from 2017’s research will migrate into everyday software applications.

The European Commission has launched a new Horizon Prize: 'Blockchains for Social Good'. 5 prizes of EUR 1 million each will be awarded to innovators that use Blockchain technology to develop decentralized solutions bringing about positive social change.

Every year, a child lives 8,760 hours (that’s 24 hours times 365 days). Let’s say she sleeps 9 hours a night. That leaves 5,475 hours awake. How many of those does she spend in school? Official compulsory instructional time for primary school ranges from under 600 hours (Russia) to nearly 1,200 hours (Costa Rica) in the OECD database. Actual days may be significantly fewer with school closures and teacher absenteeism. In many low- and middle-income countries, school days are at the low end of that due to short school days. That means that only between 10 and 20 percent of children’s waking hours are spent in school [1].

At the same time, the World Development Report 2018 argues convincingly that there is a global learning crisis, with too many children failing to learn foundational skills – like functional reading – in school [2]. Clearly there is a need to improve the quality of schooling. But at the same time, why not leverage those other 80 to 90 percent of waking hours?

One way that parents try to use those extra hours is by paying for out-of-school tutoring. This is prevalent in many countries. But because parents pay for private tutoring, it creates a particular burden on the poorest children and their families. And some evidence suggests that it may create disincentives to teach during the school day (since teachers themselves are often tutors), as in Jayachandran (2014).

Digital innovation laboratories are everywhere — and observant onlookers have had a few years to evaluate the results. I’ve had the privilege of meeting many of Singapore’s bank and insurance innovation teams and have heard numerous inside stories that give me a unique perspective on their successes and failures. In most cases, the labs haven’t truly succeeded in bringing innovation into the parent, despite their marketing departments’ attempts to show otherwise.

They are failing in their primary mission. This is not for lack of trying, but because they unwittingly apply patterns of behavior that destine them to underperform.

At the risk of oversimplification, I will summarize these unique behaviors into what I call the “dirty dozen.” This list isn’t comprehensive; I look forward to comments suggesting other significant factors. I hope that if you recognise these behaviors in your own lab, it will help you initiate change to improve your results. Simple changes can mean a lot to lab employees and the business units (BUs) that the lab serves. The following list of behaviors is not in order of importance; moreover it is likely that combinations of behaviors are inhibiting your lab, rather than any single one.

2017 was an exciting year for talent acquisition. We prepared for Generation Z. Leaders realized how critical it is to recruit female talent. Organizations focused on offering attractive benefits that supported employee development and even infertility.

With all that progress, it'd be a shame to take two steps back in 2018. Dive into the new trends before it's too late.

This is what you need to concentrate on when hiring in 2018:

1. Focus on adaptability. If we learned anything in 2017, it's that corporate stability is elusive. One week your company is leading the industry, the next the CEO is facing a series of scandals. If your workforce can't thrive in changing conditions, they won't achieve long-term success.

Andreas Pettersson is the chief product officer of the video cloud security company Arcus. The company is currently in the middle of a big hiring push, and they're approaching talent acquisition in a new way.

Pettersson pointed out that in the past, organizations looked for employees who adhered to a rigid plan. That is no longer the case.

"For today's most agile teams, a set plan is no longer a feasible or successful strategy for product development," he said. "In 2018, rather than technical skills defining the gold standard recruit, ideal candidates will fit seamlessly into the team, thrive in an empowered environment, and focus on solving the problem at hand."

Having spent my career in the education technology space, I never had the chance to attend CES, the famed Consumer Electronics Show. So when Living in Digital Times asked me to moderate a panel as part of their Kids@Play program, my response was “Yes!” How exciting! Yes, I wanted to be there and have the chance to experience this conference. Representing EdTech Times in such an environment was an honor. So, Living in Digital Times recruited speakers for the panel and then the adventure began.

In the weeks leading up to CES, I met with my panelists one by one — two robot developers, a screenless tablet game developer, and a developer of a connected toothbrush. Their technologies all focused on learning, whether it was school-based, formal learning or home-based, informal learning. As we prepared for CES, I learned about the dreams that were the genesis of each project, the friends and family that played a role in their development, and the impact that each developer hoped their technology would have on young learners around the world.

Five minutes with Mariana Mazzucato: “We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards”

The public sector is often seen as sclerotic and conservative in contrast with a dynamic and innovative private sector. This assumption lies at the basis of much of the outsourcing of public services to the private sector. In this interview and her new book, Mariana Mazzucato argues against this assessment and in favour of state-led innovation and economic growth. She maintains that the public sector usually bears the highest risks of funding innovation without then reaping the rewards.

What are the myths about the public sector and private sector that you say need to be debunked?

The myth is of a dynamic, creative, colourful, entrepreneurial private sector, that at most needs ‘unleashing’ from its constraints from the public sector. The latter is instead depicted as necessary for fixing ‘market failures’ (investing in ‘public goods’ like infrastructure or basic research) but inherently bureaucratic, slow, grey, and often too ‘meddling’. It is told to stick to the ‘basics’ but to avoid getting too directly involved in the economy.

Instead, if we look around the world, those countries that have grown or are growing through innovation-led growth are countries where the state did not limit itself to just solving ‘market failures’ but actually developed strategic missions, and was active in directing public investment in particular areas with scale and scope, changing the technological and market landscape in the process. And ironically one of the government’s that have been most active on this front is the US government, which is usually depicted in the media (and by politicians) as being more ‘market oriented’. From putting a man on the moon, to developing what later became the Internet, the US government, through a host of different public agencies, provided direct financing not only of basic research but also applied research and even early stage public venture capital (indeed Apple received $500,000 directly from public funds). In each case it provided funding for the most high risk/uncertain investments, while the private sector sat waiting behind.

CES has begun and innovators from all over the globe have flocked to Las Vegas to show off their latest products. While news of smart cities and self driving cars seems to be taking over the Internet coverage of the event, digital health innovators have a few tricks up their own sleeves hoping to disrupt the industry. From a mouthguard that can detect concussions to a cuddly AI duck that comforts kids with cancer, digital health innovators have a myriad of products to offer.

Below is a running list of digital health products on display at CES. We'll update this list with more products as the week goes on.

The future of concussion detection could come in the form of a mouthguard. Philips just launched a new sleep enhancement product called SmartSleep.Healbe will be display its weight loss and maintenance wearable, GoBe2. Cardiomo will be showing off its wearable vital monitor. The wireless monitor fits on the users chest and continuously collects vital data. The technology uses an algorithm which picks up on heart abnormalities and gives preventative suggestions.Bewell has just unveiled its latest product called MyPeriTens, a connected device designed to help treat women with weak pelvic floor issues. A cuddly Aflac duck could be key to comforting kids living with cancer. Omron Healthcare unveiled the Omron Blood Pressure Monitor + EKG, a home medical device that measures blood pressure and EKG.

You should always arrive in Rotterdam by train. That way, as you leave the station, you can turn around, as I did last month, put your bag down and look back at one of the most joyful buildings in the world. It’s the most exuberantly designed transportation hub since architect Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center at Idlewild Airport (later renamed JFK). Rotterdam Station soars, ignoring gravity, a balletic leap captured in steel, glass and wood.

This is the architectural test kitchen of Europe

In any other city it would be a centrepiece, probably an anomaly, like Bilbao’s Guggenheim or Toronto’s City Hall. But in Rotterdam, it fits right in. This is a city of wild experimentation, the architectural test kitchen of Europe, a post-war Dubai or Doha, but done better. Instead of being thrown up by a single generation of wealthy people looking to make a global reputation, Rotterdam has evolved over three quarters of a century in response to the developing needs of its people and the times they have lived in. It’s a liveable, walkable, bikeable city. But it’s managed, like those Gulf state insta-cities, to impress at every turn, not with two or three standout buildings – a Transamerica Pyramid here, a Walt Disney Concert Hall there ­– but dozens.

The Evolving Landscape of Federated Research Data Infrastructures Via Gary Price at LJ InfoDocket "From a Knowledge Exchange Introductory Post and an Abstract (via Zenodo): In 2016 the Knowledge Exchange Research Data expert group identified a need for better understanding of the nature and consequences of research and data infrastructure being more and more federated. Work was designed to find…

Higher education institutions across the United States are doing creative, painstaking, hopeful work to prepare students for lives of meaningful engagement in their communities and democracy. Typically the focus of these efforts is on developing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions students need to cast informed votes, deliberate about public issues, appreciate perspectives and experiences they may not share, and serve as responsible stewards and change-agents.

For every new piece of technology that gets developed, you can usually find people saying it will never be useful. The president of the Michigan Savings Bank in 1903, for example, said, “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.” It’s equally easy to find people raving about whichever new technology is at the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle, which tracks the buzz around these newest developments and attempts to temper predictions. When technologies emerge, there are all kinds of uncertainties, from the actual capacity of the technology to its use cases in real life to the price tag.

Eventually the dust settles, and some technologies get widely adopted, to the extent that they can become “invisible”; people take them for granted. Others fall by the wayside as gimmicky fads or impractical ideas. Picking which horses to back is the difference between Silicon Valley millions and Betamax pub-quiz-question obscurity. For a while, it seemed that Google had—for once—backed the wrong horse.

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